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St
Matthias, Thorpe-next-Haddiscoe

This
thatched, round-towered church sits dramatically
above the marshes, the river Yare and its
tributaries winding lazily below. There is a
grand farmhouse beside it, but otherwise we are
remote from busy Haddiscoe, of which
this Thorpe was a hamlet. The lower part of the
tower appears to be Saxon, the chancel is an
attractive rebuilding in red-brick, and the nave
itself is tiny.

Unusually for churches in
this part of Norfolk, the font is very old, late
Norman, when so many others were replaced in the
15th century. It may be because this square
Purbeck marble structure is plain and
undecorated, apart from blank arcades - it breaks
your heart to think that the others might have
been replaced because they showed labours of the
months or other apparently pagan imagery, which
tended to be frowned on in the late 14th and 15th
centuries when our ancestors were busy asserting
the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

This is a
plain, simple church, rather dark on this winter day, but
neat and well-kept. There are a couple of curiosities -
the most extraordinary is just inside the south doorway,
set in the west wall. Within a blind archway, two arched
alcoves are set back into the wall, the right hand one
with a shelf. I suppose that it must have been a cupboard
of some kind, perhpas an aumbry, but I also recalled two
smaller alcoves set into the eastern face of the arcade
at Haddiscoe.

A little
brass plate is in Latin, and its pre-Reformation
inscription asks for prayers for someone's soul. As DD
pointed out, it is interesting because the lettering is
decorated with little scrolls and flicks - there are
several brasses like this in the area, including the one
under the carpet at Seething, presumably all
the work of the same hand, and it may have been a way of
adding character to a plate that was never intended to
have an image associated with it.